Of all the confederacies of antiquity, which history has handed down to us, the Lycian and Achaean leagues, as far as there remain vestiges of them, … were … those which have best deserved, and have most liberally received, the applauding suffrages of political writers.

—Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 16

with their picturesque covering of pine and juniper forest, and overlooking Turkey’s “Turquoise Coast,” a long-silent bouleuterion, or council chamber, once held the proceedings of the Lycian League, considered to be history’s earliest example of the republican form of government. With its rows of stone seats set out in a semicircle around a raised dais, it looks uncannily like the chambers of modern legislatures and parliaments.
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200705/splendid.ruins.of.an.excellent.republic..htm